Today was pretty much the last day of the trip, the destination for
Marvin and myself was Rotterdam and the ferry. Just after breakfast Adam
offered me a ride round the track in the Subaru, which I gladly accepted,
it would be interesting to see the track and be able to discuss it with
somebody who knows it. Mike got in the front seat, I got in the back and
somebody else was there too, a friend of Adam's IIRC. Adam took us for
a fairly gentle lap while talking us through the corners. There was an
odd rattling noise on the Carussell but Adam said he thought it was a loose
exhaust heat shield.
At the end of the lap I swapped places with the front seat passenger
and used Adam's Yahreskart to get us through the barrier (the barrier control
thingies are at the wrong side for Brit. cars, which must be a pain if
you lack a passenger). At this point Adam became a bit concerned about
the rattle, which had indeed got worse. He opened the bonnet and looked
at the engine puzzledly. He could find no loose heat shield. I had a look
and it didn't sound good. Certainly not good enough to lap the Ring with.
I had no idea what the noise was. I briefly considered big ends,
but only because I play with an old fire engine which has a bit of a weakness
in that area. We got the barrier attendant to open the barrier and gently
reversed back through, then limped to the hotel. The noise got worse and
worse, and Adam mentioned that the clutch had gone funny. Finally the engine
just stopped and wouldn't restart. A bit of a worry, as it turned out that
they had no European recovery on the car, and that the warranty had run
out the week before.
After that we all dispersed our separate ways, marvin and I to Rotterdam
and a ferry to Hull. Ian, Jeremy, Mike and Jim to Calais. Jeff was still
in Austria, Crispin had ridden off in search of fun and fornication and
Kevin and Liam had set off days before (and, incidentally, Kevin had crashed
again in Budapest). Marvin wasn't dreadfully impressed when I didn't have
enough cash to pay the hotel bill, and had to scoot off to Adenau
to the bank machine. When I got back only marvin was left, the bill was
paid and we departed. It wasn't an exciting ride, though when we got to
Holland the route seemed to get a little strange. We failed to notice any
indication of the border, the only clue was that the road signs and number
plates changed colour.
We crossed a river on another ferry, Marvin jolly kindly paying, in
DM as we had no guilders. On one particularly non-level crossing my broken
pannier rail got unhooked from the washers holding it in place necessitating
a stop. As we got nearer Rotterdam there was no alternative to motorways,
and we droned on through increasingly dull industrialisation to the port.
It went on and on, and on. The only highlight was a positively huge
lift bridge which operated as we got there. It carried a 4 lane+reservation
road and a railway, and let through a really rather big ship. We boarded
the ferry without incident and strapped the bikes down with even less technical
stuff than the Bilbao ferry, there were no cushions. We ate and retired
to the bar where in time we got talking to a bunch of German motorcyclists
heading out to tour Ireland. One of them was a very tall girl (also very
attractive and very blonde). Marvin actually deployed his thermonuclear
chatup line, then tried to recant it as she turned pink, presumably understanding
some French as well as English. And so to bed.

As for the Subaru, it turned out that it was actually one day in warranty,
and it got recovered. The fault turned out to be a big end failure and
Subaru picked up all the bill. Adam and Amanda got back to Britain on their
bikes.